Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino - in the blood

He likes to scare his audiences witless, then watch them queue
up for more. But he's the first in line at the cinema. Is Quentin
Tarantino actually his own biggest fan?

There is a Hamburger Hamlet, one of a chain of casual diners, on
Hollywood Boulevard across from Mann's Chinese Theatre. It is 10
o'clock on a Friday night and I am waiting outside. This is one of
the few pedestrian neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, and the well-lit
pavements are packed with tourists from middle America, who pause
in front of the lingerie store Frederick's of Hollywood window
display, while hookers in platforms and pink feather boas teeter
along. The scene is very noir. Tarantino has chosen this spot and
he appears on time. He is tall, with a cheerful presence and
palpable warmth. He opens the door and, as we head inside, explains
that he's been editing all day. He tells me he wanted to go home
afterwards, have a bite to eat, take a nap, and he appreciates me
meeting him at this hour.

"Hey, do you think we could get a booth in the bar area?" he
asks. I nod. There is something immensely likable about someone who
knows they will get what they want, yet still seems unsure if
they're allowed to ask for it. Tarantino is a man who recognises
people are in awe of him but still seems amused and in awe of the
fact that he is a man people are in awe of. It is his charm. A
unique combination of geeky and swashbuckling: as if Beavis and
Butt-Head had met Errol Flynn.

We sit in a darkened vinyl booth in the bar area. He is wearing
jogging bottoms, trainers and a black T-shirt with red lettering
that reads "Battle Royale" - a film series by the late, great
Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku, where high-school students kill
one another off. The crowd could be the audience at a Jerry
Springer show. I am concerned about the noise level. But I soon
relinquish that concern when Tarantino begins speaking. He is
voluble, uninhibited, and the decibel of his voice, like the
decibel of his vision, is turned way up.

"The success thing happened in stages. But the thing is, it was,
like, a really cool cult success - there were a whole lot of
film-makers who were, like, wow, cool, I could do this. Like
starting a garage band. They were selling me as a director and I
was in a place where I could enjoy being a cult success. But then
it opened in England - awright? And it was the No 1 movie in
London. And after Reservoir Dogs opened, every British stand-up
comedian had to have a Reservoir Dogs stand-up routine - awright?
It was, like, the thing for the political cartoons to reference
it."

Reservoir Dogs did so well on its opening weekend in London that
Tarantino was brought here to do regional press. He went to
Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh, and that's when, for the first
time in his life, he felt a shift; things began to feel different.
"When I started walking around Piccadilly Circus like I've always
done, I would zone out - going to record stores or whatever. And
I'm walking around there, and all of a sudden I realised the
difference between being a cult success and having the No 1 movie
in London. I'd been on the chat shows - they all knew who I was.
And there was also this aspect which was that I was a video-store
clerk and then I made a movie. They still have a class system there
and were like, 'F***, we wouldn't let anybody do that here and
we're kind of f***ed up because of it.' I would walk into a video
store and hear, 'You're a hero here, mate!' So it was really
different. Really good different!"

Life was better than he ever imagined it could be, but there
were changes. Everyone became a homeless person - he was afraid to
make eye contact. It was an adjustment. "It was like, oh, okay, if
I want to walk down the street spaced out - do it before nine
o'clock. That's how I looked at it. Maybe it's not such a good idea
to walk down Santa Monica Boulevard crying your eyes out over a
broken relationship. Maybe you shouldn't do that now!" He reaches
out across the table and taps my arm. "You can have a broken heart
and walk around Times Square and cry it out and get it out of your
f***ing system if you want. You might not want to do that, but you
can."

Tarantino was born in 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee. His mother
was a 16-year-old nursing student, his father a 21-year-old
aspiring actor. He was raised by his mother in Los Angeles, and as
an only child with a precocious outlook he developed an early bond
with cinema and TV - the movies were his friends, the TV family his
own. "I've always attributed it to being an only child, because I
am a loner. When I'm with people I'm giving and I'm giving and I'm
giving and I'm giving - awright? Until all of a sudden, there's
nothing to give and I shut down. If you think about it, the great
thing about being an only child is you're not a pussy about being
alone. You get way good with your own company. There are definitely
traps with that too, but I think if it had to be one way or the
other, being comfortable with your own company is the way to
be."

He says that when friends would come over, because he was
starving for companionship, he was so happy that they were there
that he would give his all. "But then, when they left, I really
didn't want them to leave. You know? It was always just a little
bit sadder when they left because you would be by yourself again.
But then there were times when you were done and it was like,
'Okay, you can go now.' My first girlfriend explained this to me in
a really beautiful way. She said, 'The difference is, when you grow
up with siblings, you learn how to be alone amongst other people.
You've never learnt that. You give and you give and then all of a
sudden you run out of sh** to give, and then at that point, when
that happens, just my physical presence is oppressive to you.'"

Yet as a director he is forced to be around other people, so it
is an interesting metaphor: the director as only child on the set.
It's his world and everyone has to be perfect in it. He is nodding
now. His head is bobbing up and down as he chews on a mouthful of
chips. "It's like a family, but you're the father. But it's lonely
being the father, because you're by yourself with the
responsibility at the end of the day." And when he needs a little
alone time? "I go to the bathroom a lot. I've done that ever since
I was 14. It's the one place I can go to for about 5 or 10 minutes
and be by myself and think my own thoughts for a second - get out
of the hubbub, then go back in and feel good. It's like taking a
nap. People probably think I have this really weak bladder or
something. But it's like a time-out."

Just then a couple approach and ask for his autograph. He signs
the napkin and hands it back. "Here you go, Chris. I appreciate
it!" Voluntarily, he jumps out of the booth for a photo, embracing
Chris's girlfriend for posterity - knowing he has now become a part
of their "Hollywood experience". Like an only child who identifies
with other only children, Tarantino identifies with his fans. He
dropped out of school at 16 and began to learn about the world
through film - working as an usher in an adult-movie theatre and
finally landing his now infamous job at Video Archives in Manhattan
Beach, where he could watch movies free every day while plotting
his destiny.

"The most a person can ever be is interesting. I think it's the
greatest thing in the world to be. Interesting at anything is a
better combination than most. But I really love the little
relationships where I don't really know this guy or this girl but
they seem really interesting and if we hang out, I bet we'd become
best friends. It's good to have the possibility - other friends out
there in the world - so you know there's more to know."

He hangs out with a core group of people for certain periods of
time. "I've been in this strange bubble since I started writing
Kill Bill. It's made me pull away from a lot of people, just to do
the hard work of writing."

Because he was writing with Uma Thurman in mind, he moved to New
York and began hanging out with her again, getting to know her.
"But I also knew I had to write Kill Bill in New York. And that's
what I did for a year and half. Just write the script and watch
kung-fu movies every single, solitary day."

He's not big on schedules, preferring instead to be guided by
instinct. But in New York he wrote every day. There was a routine.
He'd get up in the morning and poke around the apartment until it
was time to get some coffee. "That was my job. To go to a Starbucks
or some other place and kick back. And, uh, if I felt like writing
I would start writing." He writes everything by hand into a
notebook. At a certain point he would tire of the environment, so
he would get up and walk around - until he found another place.
Then get up from there, walk around until he had enough, and then
he would go home and watch movies.

When he was done with the notebooks, he took an old 1987 Smith
Corona word processor - the same one he typed Reservoir Dogs and
Pulp Fiction on - and since he can't type, he used one index finger
to get it done. He then gave those pages to a typist who would type
them up properly. "It's such a pain in the ass to do it. I have to
print it out after every single page. But then I also feel
accomplishment after every page! Because up until then it's been
like [the serial killer] Richard Ramirez's diaries."

Seconds later he subsides, as though a tornado has just passed
by. "But um, also, because it's such a pain in the ass, it's like,
this better be f***ing Shakespeare or I'm cutting this sh** out. It
better all be f***ing gold if I'm gonna type it with one f***ing
finger!"

He never gets writer's block. "My best sh** - I don't know how
much I did - I just left myself open to it." Once he doesn't know
where to go, or runs out of ideas, he accepts it. "I'll just say,
'Okay, I'm through for today.'"

It has been a while since we have heard from Tarantino. The
third movie he directed, Jackie Brown, was released in 1997, and
since then people have wondered: where has he been? What has he
been doing? There have been chinese whispers: alcohol? Drugs?
Pothead! Partier! He was burnt out; he was lazy; there was too much
too soon and he was unable to sustain it; it was all hype. But the
story is, he has been writing. A little acting too. But for the
most part, writing. He wanted to write something original because
Jackie Brown was an adaptation and, he says, "the director got a
workout". And then, with the play he was in (a Broadway revival of
Wait until Dark in 1998), "the actor got a workout". He felt it was
time for the writer.

He worked on a few things - a family comedy, for instance - but
decided they weren't ready, and then he had his second-world-war
idea, which he worked on for three years. "It turned into a whole
Norman Mailer-style opus." He did a lot of research. "It was some
of the best stuff I've ever written, but it was becoming this novel
that wouldn't end." He says that he had to make another movie to
realise how to tame it. "So Kill Bill was gonna be the movie I did
before I did my epic. Cut to a year and a half later and I'm still
writing it and people were like, 'Okay, if this ain't the epic, I'm
f***ing scared for the epic! I'm afraid for your epic if this ain't
it!'" He laughs.

It was during the time that he was working on the war project
that he bumped into Uma Thurman at a party. He hadn't seen her
since Pulp Fiction, when he had told her about Kill Bill, that he
had written 30 pages. At this party she asked about it. He went
home that night, looked up those pages, read them again and
thought: "F*** it, man. I'm just gonna do this now."

Tarantino was 31 when Pulp Fiction opened and won the Palme d'Or
in 1994. Its critical and commercial success blurred the line
between mainstream and independent cinema. It was nominated for
seven Academy Awards (Tarantino won, along with his then
collaborator Roger Avary, for best screenplay) and it gave Miramax,
the studio behind it, a lot of clout. Because of this, even more so
than Reservoir Dogs in 1992, Harvey Weinstein, the president of
Miramax, anointed Tarantino as his favoured child. His widely
reported quote, "Miramax is the house that Tarantino built," is
surprising not just for its honesty, but because Weinstein is not
known for his generosity in indulging a director's cut. With Kill
Bill, it was Weinstein's idea to have it released in two parts,
beginning with Volume One, released in October.

What compels Tarantino to write? Suddenly the motions - the
chewing, the sipping, the hand gestures, the fidgeting, the
fluttering - stop. He takes a breath. He is thinking.

"God. Wow. What compels a comedian to be funny? I don't know.
'Compels' is such a powerful word. I guess, when it comes to...
things you do extremely well for no reason whatsoever - and it's
kind of easy for you, so you know you do it better than a lot of
other people?" He is unravelling the thought as he speaks. "It's
what I do. I don't know if 'compelled' is the right word."

"I feel to some degree that when I get my characters talking to
each other, I'm just like a court reporter. I'm just writing it
down. It's like I'm not doing it. I don't understand my part in the
process." He pauses. "Other than trusting it."

This instinct to trust is everything. Like a novelist trusting
the muse, Tarantino is the artist as opposed to the technician when
it comes to screenplays. And what distinguishes him is that he
writes with authority. A reverence for words and the rhythms of
language. It's not the words he uses (they are not "highfalutin",
as he might put it) but the way he strings sentences together into
a symphony of dialogue. So while others make it pretty, he makes it
sing. Whereas others follow a formula, he follows the muse.

Has he always trusted himself in this way? He answers
immediately, with matter-of-fact confidence. "I always liked my
writing. If I was a carpenter and I knew I could make a really cool
birdhouse, and then as soon as I was finished with it I could show
it to everyone else and they could see what a really cool birdhouse
it was. I mean, why not? I've never understood... but all these
people, when I was writing screenplays, would talk about their work
and how much they don't like it and I would always kind of admire
them a little bit because I was like, 'How do you ever get anything
done?' It's so hard to finish that the only reason I can do it is
because I know I'm good and I can't wait for the world to see I'm
good at it. It's like I have the best-kept secret on the planet
right now and soon everyone will get to hear it."

Is he saying he's not insecure? "When I write a good piece of
work, I know it. I'm ridiculously vain when it comes to my writing.
One of the things that gets me through a really big-deal scene is
that as soon as I finish with it, I'm gonna call a friend of mine
and read it to them. I mean, I might as well be masturbating when I
call them up, awright? I say, 'Can I just read this to you?' and
they're like, 'Yeah, sure,' and I don't really want them to tell me
what's right or what's wrong - I've already read it about 12 times
while I'm pacing around my apartment or my house. I want to read it
to them so now, as I listen to it, I'll be listening to it through
their ears. They don't need to comment! I can hear all the sour
notes for them. I'm using their presence."

Most people would never admit to this, but most people don't
have the self-awareness he has about the narcissism of writing.
This is not arrogance so much as an acceptance of what is. He
acknowledges he is a good writer the way someone else might
acknowledge that they're caucasian, or short.

He continues: "If you think about it, bringing someone to see a
movie, you get to enjoy it even more because you're seeing it
through their eyes.You're seeing it fresh all over again. But it
works the other way too. When you bring a friend that you think is
going to like a movie and they don't like it? You wince all the way
through because you're knowing all the things they're not liking.
In no other art form - whether it's with lovers or husbands and
wives or friends - do you find a more common glue than movies.
People can spend every day together and like different types of
music. You could say that about literature too. Nobody has to like
the same painting. But when a movie becomes special to you - when
you really love it - you take on an ownership. With movies, when
you're affected, it's yours.

"If you think someone is smart and you show them a movie that
requires a little bit of work but has a tremendous amount of reward
and they don't get it, you can never think about them with the
intelligence you thought about them before. You can't. For someone
to not understand why you responded to a movie that means something
to you, is like for them not to understand you."

Tarantino lives to defend the movie everyone hates. "My purpose
in life is to go see that movie and say, 'F*** you all. This movie
is good, and I'll tell you why!'" When asked for a movie that comes
to mind, he lights up, like a schoolboy who's just got an A in his
exam. In the past five years, the movie he has championed most is
Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho. "I thought that was the ballsiest
movie of the year - maybe one of the greatest experiments in the
history of cinema. It inspired me in a way no movie has
before."

The momentum is building and it seems that no matter what else
is going on - the world could be ending - it would be rendered
irrelevant."Even the people in the f***ing car with me didn't get
it," he recalls. "I remember driving with my girlfriend at the
time, and a buddy of mine and his girlfriend, and they were like,
'I wonder why he wanted to do that?' And then someone said, 'Well,
I guess it's a film he grew up watching.' And I was like, 'No. I
don't think that. I don't think that at all. In fact, I got no
indication from this movie at all that he even liked the original.
He was doing an experiment on a far deeper level.'"

He is all fired up now. "Look, shut me up in 10 minutes and I'll
tell you what I like about it, okay? You got a watch?" His energy
and enthusiasm are gripping - they pull you in - and his passion
for making a point, his commitment, defines who he is. When he sees
something that you don't, he longs for you to see it his way. But
this desire is not about being right: it is about conveying.

"What I thought was really cool was, everyone is making a big
deal because everyone treats Hitchcock like he's the Buddha of
f***ing cinema. I mean, he may look like Buddha, but he ain't
Buddha, awright? I mean, I'm not really that reverential about
Hitchcock at all. I mean, I'm not saying I don't like him - I'm not
saying he's a bad director, okay, but you know what: f*** him. I
don't care. He's not a religious icon. He's the guy that when you
first get into cinema, he's very easy to love. I think at a certain
point you outgrow him. But he takes you to a certain place."

Ten minutes have passed. "Okay, so what Gus Van Sant did was, he
took the exact same script as the original Psycho, not one word
rewritten, and shot it with 80% of the same camera angles. And
that's a very interesting experiment, okay? No one has ever done
that before. If you take the same script and use the same camera
angles, but if your intention is completely different than the
intention of the original director, and you update it to 20 years
later, but you don't change anything in the relationships, now
viewed from today's audiences in today's times - how different a
movie will you get?"

Ten more. "If you've ever seen Psycho, you remember it starts
with John Gavin and Janet Leigh having this illicit affair during
her lunch hour. When you do that same scene with Viggo Mortensen
and Anne Heche? And it's, like, 1995? They both seem so f***ing
white trash! I mean, having an affair in her lunch hour and she
works at a bank and she's going to a motel to get f***ed by her
greasy boyfriend - not John Gavin, but Viggo Mortensen? They're
f***ing in a motel, for Chrissake! It's really sleazy. So the whole
movie is put through that kind of stuff."

He relates this briefly to Kill Bill, explaining that the
experience of seeing his film will be in the moment but then by
next year, if you see it again, you'll know what's happened - and
then for the rest of your life you'll know how it turns out. "So it
will be a different experience for people yet to be born who will
see Kill Bill than what's going to happen now to people who see it
in theatres."

I am struck by his absolute assurance of his position in the
future. The certainty of his work becoming a part of film history
is something that just is. He is still going: "Now. How that
relates to Psycho is, when Hitchcock made Psycho, no one in the
theatre knew Anthony Perkins was his mother. That was the big
surprise, the thing they were selling. That when you get to the
end, you go, 'Oh, wow! That's who it is!' So everything was
designed in that movie to not let you think that was the case. Is
there any movie where the surprise ending is known more than
Psycho? It would take a lifelong Brazilian drag queen four hours to
have the perfect dragness that Anthony Perkins has when he's
stabbing - awright? They're not trying to fool us. So now, it's a
character. It's real. Norman Bates is crazy. It's become a
character study. The fact that you have a whole movie based on a
surprise, and then you do the movie 40 years later knowing that
everyone knows the surprise... He's not trying to sell you that
it's a mystery. He's selling you a character study, but not
changing anything. That's the thing that makes it interesting."

Forty-five minutes later, he sits back and smiles. Not smug:
satisfied. Whether you agree or not is beside the point. He enjoys
provoking, discussing, and one of his most salient qualities is
that he recognises the value of the alternative perspective.

Two hours have passed and we have yet to talk about Kill Bill.
As I begin to give him my thoughts on the movie, I feel as if I
should apologise. There is guilt, as though I've been hiding candy
from a child. And I want to tell him it's not that I've been
withholding - it's that we've been distracted. I feel a need to say
this only because I get the sense that, this whole time, he's been
holding his breath, waiting patiently, trying to be restrained. And
now, talking about the movie, finally: he can exhale. The fact is,
Kill Bill is intoxicating. Every second is exhilarating. Like he
wants the audience to have an experience seeing his movie that they
would have taking drugs or having sex or going to a rock concert:
anything extreme and addictive, an over-the-top pleasure. "What did
you think?" He asks, eager to get into it. "And don't be too
precious."

Tarantino loves it that people will cringe, wince, look away.
It's all about the response in the moment. The audible, rollicking
reaction.

"I had to tell Miramax, 'Don't worry about the f***ing blood,
man. When the audience is going, "Arrghh," that's them having a
f***ing good time! They're all doing it in unison. It's fun!'" He
describes the experience like this: "It's like I'm actually able to
get you to reach the climax with me about my own masturbatory
fantasy. What I'm trying to get you to do is get off with me. Not
before me, not two seconds after me, but to reach climax when I
would. And then, hopefully, everyone is like, 'Ahhhhh!' And I've
seen movies where I've felt that."

Kill Bill is an obsessive movie and therefore, perhaps, his most
personal. It's a synthesis of all the genres he's ever loved.
Spaghetti westerns and kung fu and yakuza and on and on. The
attention paid to certain details is remarkable. The scripting, the
shooting, the symbiotic relationship between director and actress -
all of it. Since he is looking through obsessive eyes, I ask what
he is reflecting back. "Maybe I don't want you to know the focus,
but I want you looking with that strong a gaze."

Until it stops playing, he considers it his job to go and see
his movie in the cinemas. "I go all the time. The weekend it opens
- that entire weekend is mine. And I have to be in LA, because
these are the theatres I know because I grew up here."

He goes alone. All day, beginning with the first show. He drives
all over town checking out how it's playing with different
audiences. "Sometime around 8pm I usually go to the Magic Johnson
Theatre to see how it's playing with the brothers. That's the real
test. Awright? Then I pick some really, really cool theatre and go
see the midnight show. So that whole weekend, that's all I do."

He does this for his own enjoyment and it's what he claims to be
making the movie for. "This is the orgasm. If the whole thing from
the start of page one was the sex act, it all leads to the ultimate
orgasm of me watching it with a paying audience. So much so that at
a certain point I can't watch it with the editor any more - I can't
watch it with people who've seen it... it's like I'm jerking off.
I've got to hold onto it for when it counts."

He repeats this process all over the world, going to London,
Brazil, Mexico. He's even cutting a special version of Kill Bill
for Japanese audiences. The fight sequences go to black and white
because, as he says, "They can handle it."

He leans forward. "You saw it this morning, right?" I nod. This
leads to a discussion of how, if a movie is special, it will stay
with you, whether you like it or not, all day. "I saw Annie Hall,"
he says, "not knowing sh** about it when I was a little kid. I rode
down on my bike, saw it, rode my bike home, and I had just seen
Annie Hall. So I went back to my bedroom and I lay down on my bed
and I wrestled with the movie. I'd seen something profound. I was a
little too young to realise how profound it was, but I knew it was
profound. Woody Allen took a leap with that movie and he took me
with him. And I didn't know where I'd leapt to, but I loved it. In
that little montage at the end - when he ruminates on Annie? - I
found myself being moved. But I've never had any feelings like that
before, ever. You know, I didn't know about relationships then. But
I knew I was moved."

That he would be touched by the sorrow of heartbreak for the
first time through a movie is telling. For Tarantino, real life and
the fantasy life of film ae fused. He learnt early on to interpret
life through film, and Tarantino the man is a walking kaleidoscope
of his influences. There has been a question of where he is in his
films. His signature resides in pacing and rhythm, but emotionally
there is a blank. Whereas the origins of someone like Scorsese's
violence are organic - coming out of immigrant repression -
Tarantino's violence is less specific. It is wild and off the map,
often perceived as slick, shocking, humorous but without gravity.
So where is he in the movie?

"You know what? The real answer is, I could tell you a bunch of
different things but they wouldn't be true. I'm not really that
reactionary an artist. I want to be able to look at it much later
when it's all over with. Two years from now I could answer and know
what I'm talking about, about what is me in Kill Bill, but I'm too
in the middle of it now."

There are some answers, though. For instance, in Kill Bill there
is nothing pandering about Uma Thurman's character. She is not
trying to get you to like her. And in a way, right there, is an
autobiographical moment. As much as Tarantino wants to be liked, it
is trumped by not caring what he says, or what people think.
Watching his films, one is both compelled and repelled. Kill Bill
is only the fourth film that Tarantino has written and directed,
though it feels he's done more. It is in his nature to take his
work seriously: "I can see kids on the street who are six years old
and I think, by 16 they'll see my first movie and know who I am and
want to see every f***ing movie I've made and think, 'This
motherf***er is talking to me.' I want all my movies to rock their
world."

We pause to order a dessert. A debate over the caramel banana
sundae or the Oreo cookie mud pie produces outrage. "Wait. You want
chocolate sauce instead of caramel sauce? That makes no sense at
all. I assumed you were talking about the ice cream. I couldn't
imagine you had a problem with the sauce. If you're not responding
to the caramel aspect of the caramel sundae, I would definitely say
Oreo!" I'm beginning to think that sugar at this late hour might
not be the best idea.

The fact that he made this movie surprised him. "I'm a lazy
person," he says. "I don't write every day, like a job. If I want
to do something else that day, I will." Yet when he is reminded
that he is where he is because he created it for himself, he
rethinks the statement. "I'm a go-getter's soul in a lazy person's
body."

There is an obvious joy that he gets from being able to spend
his days watching films and still be a responsible member of
society. That he is allowed to exist in this way impresses and
beguiles him. "I get to watch kung-fu movies all motherf***ing day
long. And I was doing what I was supposed to do!"

He watched at least one, if not two or three, kung-fu movies a
day, for a year and a half - and most of them were movies he'd seen
before. It got to the point where he was seeing so many Hong Kong
and Japanese movies that he began to think all the American movies
that were opening were some sort of weird, archaic cinema that has
nothing to do with mainstream. Then, suddenly: "I can't believe you
wanted to bypass the caramel!"

The rollercoaster ride of conversation with him is as much a
part of his films as it is his life. An interview could be a scene
in one of his movies.

It is quiet now. The crowd has left. Chairs are upside down on
top of tables, and the background music has been turned off. The
clock says it is 2.15am but I remember they close at 1am, so when
the manager approaches our table we realise they've been waiting
for us to finish up. He apologises, says they have to go home.
Tarantino instantly reassures him: "Oh, man, don't worry, it's all
good." As we walk towards the car park, we talk about times when he
hasn't behaved as honourably as he should have. He reflects on
these times as meaningful. If it left a scar, he learnt something.
He says he might lie to himself in the bluster of a moment, but
when he's by himself he's harder on himself. "I'm more inclined to
go on a detest fest than I am to suck my own dick. And when I am
sucking my own dick I'm really putting it under a microscope
asking, 'Is this okay?'"

It is nearly 3am and the streets are empty. We get to the car
park, into his car, a burgundy Volvo, the only one left in the lot.
He starts the engine, slowly beginning to drive, turning the wheel
with both hands, immersed in thought. He glances over his shoulder
and makes a left onto Sunset Boulevard. "Once you get to where
you're going, you're not as hungry. You're there... You have all
the food you can possibly eat."

He is driving without having asked where I'm going. But we are
moving in the right direction, so I stay silent.

And what about his appetite now? "In the case of Kill Bill, it's
proving to myself. Do I have to prove I know what I'm doing? No. Do
I have to prove that I'm a great action director? You better
f***ing believe it. Because I've never done action before. For me,
who understands it and thinks action directors are maybe the most
cinematic directors, it means I have to be one of the best action
directors in the world, or else I fail."

There is a pause. "You know where we're going? You gotta tell me
left or right."

Who will be the arbiter of whether Kill Bill has passed the
test? How will he know? "If it doesn't give me a hard-on, it won't
for anyone else. My standards are high, as they should be. Action
cinema is like rock'n'roll. It needs to constantly keep moving
forward."

We sit at a red light watching as a group of glammed-up teenage
girls cross the street. A trio have linked arms and there is one,
by herself, who trails behind. He notices her, a bit chubbier than
the others in her little party dress, and turns to me. "There's a
sweetness about her, don't you think?"

We are nearly at my hotel and he has been, and still is, so
upbeat, I am curious about how he handles depression. How does he
control it if it occurs while he's on the set? He tells me there
was one time, while filming for Kill Bill in Beijing, where he got
as depressed as he's ever been. It was a week when everything was
ridiculously hard. He won't get into the specifics, but says it was
the kind of depression that can't be "blown off".

"I've been very spoilt up until this movie. I've always been
allowed to play in the back yard by my rules. And it was a whole
week - for a couple of days, I was pretty bad. I'm not used to
being depressed on the set. I'm not used to that. All of a sudden
it went from the hardest and loveliest job in the world to the
worst job in the world."

What did the trick was a friend of his sending him a care
package. "It was a girl. And she sent me, like, bath salts and
apricot this and kiwi that, and loofah sponges and just all this
girlie bath sh**. And I made a really hot bath and I poured all
that sh** in it. And after soaking and chilling out, after this
awful week, I was like, okay, this is what I gotta do, and 20 years
from now, no one's gonna give a f*** about how depressed I am and
that I want to say, 'F*** it all.' No one's gonna care about that.
They're only gonna care how I handled it."

Just then, for the first time, he looks off into the distance.
"But life is pretty good. Even when life was sh**ty, it was pretty
f***ing good."